The Salt of the Land and the Light of the World

BibleProject

BibleProject Podcast

Christianity, Old Testament, Torah, Theology, New Testament, God, Demons, Tim Mackie, Bible Study, Angels, Bible, Jesus, Spiritual Beings, Jon Collins, Religion & Spirituality, Spirit, Satan

4.8 • 18.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sermon on the Mount E8 – Why does Jesus call his followers salt and light? In the Hebrew Bible, salt is a metaphor for God’s long-lasting covenant with Israel, connected to priestly sacrifices, ritual purity, and social bonds. And the Hebrew word for light, or, shares a wordplay with torah, meaning God’s wise instruction. God’s wisdom given in the Torah is a light for Israel that they are called to share with the nations. In this episode, Jon and Tim discuss the meanings of salt and light, showing how Jesus applies these covenant words to his new community of followers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is
0:05.0	this is Bible Project Podcast and this year we're reading through the sermon on the mount.
0:09.0	I'm John Collins and with me is co-host Michelle.
0:12.0	Hi Michelle. Hi, John. So today we're going to read a
0:14.6	well-known part of the sermon on the Mount. Jesus calls his followers the
0:18.5	light of the world. Yeah Jesus gets this straight from the prophet Isaiah. Here's Tim.
0:22.8	The key point is that God's light and God's instruction shine out to the world to show the way to true life.
0:30.0	And Jesus is assuming and building on Isaiah's word play,
0:34.0	and that's going to play a key role in understanding what he means.
0:37.0	But before Jesus says you are the light of the world,
0:40.0	he says something that's a little harder to understand.
0:42.0	He says you are the salt of the land.
0:45.0	That's less intuitive.
0:47.0	What does it mean to be salt?
0:49.0	Well, that's where Tim is going to start today.
0:51.0	We're going to look at the many different ways that
0:53.0	salt is used in the ancient world and we'll puzzle over why Jesus calls us
0:57.2	salt. Thanks for joining hi. Hey John, hi. Hey, we're in the introduction of the servant on the mount.
1:04.0	Mm-hmm. Hey John, hi. Hi.
1:13.0	Hey, we're in the introduction of the Sermon on the Mount.
1:15.0	Yeah, we've been exploring the opening kind of movement of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, and so we're talking here about how Jesus
1:24.8	calls his followers the salt of the land, the light of the world,
	...

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